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Theoretically, the more sensitive to the emotional states of others leaders are the more difficult it may become for those leaders to ignore those states and act in a way that is needed to reify the organizational vision (and possibly cause further emotional grief to followers). This “emotional curse” will also be prevalent if one is unduly sensitive to one's own emotional states. - Antonakis et al., 2009, 250
Reality is the Self! – The essence of the Bhagavad Gita as distilled by R. Sinha, ca. 1994
The notion of leadership is full of romance, mystique, voguish variation, and disappointment. People want to be led well and they want to lead. These are clichés. Is there a way to lead well, and if so, does psychological science have anything useful to say? Are there lessons of lasting significance? There is indeed a voluminous scholarly literature (see Antonakis & Day, 2018, for an excellent and comprehensive review). There is an even larger literature in organizational studies and business. Much of the latter is dominated by the tales and stories of individuals, mostly men, who were at one time significant (Iacocca, 1985). Fads continue to rule, with the latest always and falsely promising to be the last one. Authentic leadership, effective leadership, positive leadership, pragmatic leadership, and what have you. Will the true leadership please stand up? Sensing this state of uncertainty and evanescence, many turn to classical, even scriptural or sacred tests for guidance, on the notion that the oldest ideas have stood the test of time the longest (Gott, 1993; Krueger, 2001). This post is an effort in that direction. Let’s go East of Eden.
We will cut right past Clausewitz, Caesar, G. Khan, and Sun-Tzu, and go to the most sacred of sacred texts in the Hindu East, the Bhagavad Gita (Swami, 2014). No one knows how old the Gita is or who wrote it. It doesn’t matter. The Gita is a song, a poem, and a dialogue embedded in the Mahabharata, an epic describing the conflict between two clans, one good and one evil, over military and political supremacy. In it, Prince Arjuna stars as a kind of an anti-hero who has to overcome all-too-human instincts and inclinations to achieve wisdom and victory. Doing this, he becomes a leader who inspires to the present day. Arjuna does not have much of a speaking part in the Gita. He puts questions to his charioteer Sri Krishna, who is none other than the incarnated supreme Lord of the Universe. Krishna understands that he has to become man to teach man, that dialogue and verbal instruction is what humans, due to their nature, require. Divine inspiration, arriving in dreams or flashes of insight, will not do.
Arjun is, at the outset, in a position of leadership, and he fails (Roka, 2006). He commands his army to confront the forces of his evil challengers, and he asks his charioteer to take him between the two armies so he may survey them. Krishna obliges and Arjun realizes that many of his kinsmen are among his challengers and he loses heart. In fact, he experiences a crisis of conscience in the form of the curse of emotion (Antonakis et al. 2009). The assault of empathic emotions renders him paralyzed (see also Bloom, 2017, and Krueger, 2011). He cannot lead his army, he feels, because the impending slaughter will be a human catastrophe. The next 17 chapters of the 18-chapter Gita relate Krishna’s way of setting Arjun straight.
Krishna’s message reduces to the following claim: Do not take yourself so seriously. Your experience of pity and sympathy is little else but a fit of self-absorption. You need to do what your social position, your caste, your ancestors, your people oblige you to do. You are the warrior prince and you must act like it. This may seem harsh and it may smell like an ethic of authoritarianism and obedience. But this interpretation would be a misreading of the Gita. Most of the text is dedicated to sublimation of this message. Krishna raises and transcends a central paradox of human existence. He demands that we act in this world mindful of our responsibilities. Our focus shall not be on having our desires gratified, for any such gratification would be illusory and transient. We must do the right thing without eyeing personal benefit. This does sound strange to the Western mind because the sum of the personal benefits makes up the collective good, and presumably (even to Krishna) this matters. So why won’t the individual interest matter? Krishna transcends further by claiming that the ultimate and only reality is the Self, often rendered with a capital S, which is, by the way, identical to him, Krishna, the soul of the universe.
It is a humbling message all right. But it is also liberating. Westerners who have looked deeply into the nature of man (person), like Arthur Schopenhauer, Bertrand Russell, or the author of Ecclesiastes, have exposed the vanity and futility of self-absorption. And yet we must struggle on. That’s the deal. Neither self-glorification nor ascetic escape will do.
What’s in it for the (would-be) leader? A lot. The first task is to say good-bye to any variant of the self-absorbed, egocentric, celebrity-enamored model of leadership. It’s a sham, and it will eventually bite you in the derrière. Leadership that leaves a legacy is fully focused on a great goal and the many people who are involved in it and who will benefit from it. If there is gratitude or fame to come from that, it is incidental. It cannot be the goal.
Arjun is still respected today, and now, dear reader, you are one of his admirers. Caesar and Napoleon made hay in their day, to be sure, but we know they were egomaniacs. Can you really, in your heart, respect an egomaniac?
Arjun is humanized by the author of the Gita because he (or she) shows him first as vulnerable, before showing his journey to strength after having learned. Had he always been strong and wise, he would be – as the fashionable phrase goes – less relatable. Which is to say, leaders, and the rest of us are called upon to face our human instincts, experience them fully, and then transcend their action implications and do what needs to be done, for the greater good. And even if it doesn’t mean much from the point of view of the Lord of the Universe, we will have done our best as humble human beings and as integral parts of the Self.
References
Antonakis, J., & Day, D. V. (2018). The nature of leadership (3rd ed). Los Angeles, Sage.
Antonakis, J., Ashkanasy, N. M., Dasborough, M. T. (2009). Does leadership need emotional intelligence? The Leadership Quarterly, 20, 247-261.
Bloom, P. (2017). Empathy and its discontents. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21, 24-31.
Gott, J. R. (1993). Implications of the Copernican principle for our future prospects. Nature, 363, 315-319.
Iacocca, L. (1985). Iacocca. New York, Bantam Books.
Krueger, J. (2001). Null hypothesis significance testing: On the survival of a flawed method. American Psychologist, 56, 16-26.
Krueger, J. I. (2011). Altruism gone mad. In B. Oakley, A. Knafo, G. Madhavan, & D. S. Wilson (Eds.), Pathological altruism (pp. 392-402). New York: Oxford University Press.
Roka, P. (2006). Bhagavad Gita on effective leadership. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse.
Swami, S. P. (2014; translator). Bhagavad Gita. Woodstock, VT: Skylight Paths.
